SBVR11 — 'quantity' and 'number' are not formal logic concepts

In SBVR clause 8.7, the terms 'quantity' and 'number' are marked as "FL", which means that they are formal logic concepts that are defined in Clause 10. The same is true of 'quantity equals quantity' and 'quantity is less than quantity'. Formal logic does not deal with physical quantities – there is a whole science for that. And formal logic per se does not deal with numbers other than non-negative integers. The 'signed integer' concept is part of a specific mathematical theory. There is not, and should not be, any definition of these concepts in Clause 10. The FL marks should be removed.

Further, these concepts should not be part of the Meaning and Representation Vocabulary, although they are useful business concepts that might be appropriate in Clause 11. Nonnegative integer is needed for the 'cardinality' concept; 'positive integer' is used in quantifications. 'Positive integer' is misused to represent an ordinal concept in 'starting character position' and as an identifier convention for instances of 'variable'.

The RTF agrees that ‘quantity’ and ‘number’ are not formal logic concepts. The ‘FL’ designation will be removed.
While these concepts are not used in the normative text, they are used in examples, and there is no particular reason to delete them from the adopted specification. Since the “is less than” and “is equal to” fact types are used in the normative text, and integer inherits these usages, moving the concepts is not a simple matter. So this part of the issue will result in no change.
The use of ‘positive integer’ in ‘starting character position’ will be raised as a separate issue